Stylish Academic Writing

“Stylish scholars, my colleagues told me, express complex ideas clearly and precisely; produce elegant, carefully crafted sentences; convey a sense of energy, intellectual commitment, and even passion; engage and hold their readers’ attention; tell a compelling story; avoid jargon, except where specialized terminology is essential to the argument; provide their readers with aesthetic and intellectual pleasure; and write with originality, imagination, and creative flair.”

Helen Sword, Stylish Academic Writing

If you haven’t explored Helen Sword’s work on academic writing, I implore you to do so. With books like Stylish Academic Writing, Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write, and Writing with Pleasure, Sword teaches academics not only how to write well, but also how to experience joy and pleasure in the process. Becoming a compelling writer need not be a chore.

Here, she compiles an excellent (and darn near exhaustive) list of books to help academics become writers. It is well worth perusing if you’re serious about pursuing excellence in your academic writing.